According to Jacques Battistoni, general practitioners are already carrying out a form of surveillance by mentioning coronavirus contaminations on work stoppages. For him, the application envisaged by the government will give a “global vision”.
“We absolutely need this look”, said on Franceinfo, on Saturday May 2, the president of the MG France general practitioner union, Jacques Battistoni, about the possible implementation of an application tracking the movements and contacts of patients with coronavirus. For him, we must be able to quickly identify the formation of new foci of infection, which requires increased surveillance of new cases of Covid-19.
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franceinfo: What does the government expect from you?
Jacques Battistoni: We will do our daily work, continue to receive patients who may have a Covid, to whom we will make a diagnosis. From this diagnosis, we will prescribe a test. This test will tell us if these patients are actually affected by Covid-19 or not and depending on the result of the test, we will make care and support measures for this patient, as well as a search for contact cases in order to protect the entourage of this patient.
How will this research go? Is it you who will be responsible for it, or health insurance, as Olivier Véran mentioned?
The general practitioner will initiate this research. He will take the first step. He is not going to do everything because it is not his job to do an investigation. On the other hand, he knows the entourage of the patient. He knows the people with whom he lives, the people he has been able to meet and in this case he will contribute to this investigation by providing the elements of which he is aware. Eventually, if they are people he knows well, he will call them himself and hand over to Health Insurance.
Regarding the deconfinement phase, general practitioners are in the best position to detect each possible case, propose the necessary tests, and decide on the protection strategy for those around them as well as desirable individual surveillance. pic.twitter.com/ejnin02QxU
– MG FRANCE (@MG_France) April 29, 2020
Do you understand the fears around the existence of personal data files?
We are in a case that we already know. When a patient comes to see us, for example a patient with Covid-19, we provide him with a work stoppage if he is employed and in this work stoppage we indicate the reason. We are asked to do so by Health Insurance but also by the government. We indicate “Covid-19”. The fact that he works therefore implies this mention, it will not be very different for us.
What are your views on the controversies concerning the “Stop Covid” application?
In this story, we are faced with a fire. Today we have successfully extinguished the fire. On the other hand, there can be, here or there, reappearances of epidemic foci so it is extremely important to be vigilant. And how can we be vigilant if we do not have an overall vision? If we are not able, in a given territory, to spot where something is happening? We absolutely need this look and this look is necessarily brought by the existence of a file which centralizes this information.
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